Contour Enthusiasts Group Archives Forums General Troubleshooting Control arm / alignment problem

Same thing happened to my tire, but on the inside edge of the driver's side tire. I thought it was strange since the car at the time drove straight as an arrow, yet there was no denying there was an alignment problem looking at the tire wear. Now I know why it ate that tire. Why Ford used rubber bushings on the control arms is beyond me. Seems to me urethane bushings were in order there.

2 reasons-rubber is CHEAP (this is very important at Ford) and it gives much better NVH isolation than polyurethane.

After months of postponing changing the control arms, I finally did them myself this past weekend. What a project! It took me a lot longer than I thought it would (then again, what project on this car doesn't?). I got the new control arms from www.fordpartsonline.com and got them at a good price and they arrived quickly.

The problem was installing the new ones were impossible without compressing the sping and strut, as the control arm does not move down enough to install it with the suspension fully unloaded. After disassembling the entire left side suspension (control arms, tie rods, inner CV joint, stablizer bar end links, spring and strut assembly), I then came to the conclusion the only way to get the new arms in was to use a hydraulic jack under the ball joint and load the suspension so I could get the control arm mounting points level with the sub-frame. The trouble was everytime I tried to jack it up, it slid out toward me since it wasn't connected. The solution was to use a come-along connected to the floor jack and to the other side of the frame. That way it kept the whole assembly straight as I jacked it up, and allowed me to pull the control arm into its spot on the frame. And of course I learned the hard way that if the drive axle moves outwards too much once you have the control arm disconnected, the tripod bearings on the inner CV joint will come apart and the driveshaft won't move back in until you pull the boot off and reassemble the bearings. What a greasy mess that was. It would have been nice if the Haynes manual warned me of this stuff. All I got was "remove the control arm" and "installation is the reverse of removal procedure." Yeah, right :rolleyes:

Thanks to Bradness for the tip on cutting the two front bolts on the left side instead of jacking up the engine. That worked great and was a huge time/grief saver.

Anyway, all of this work paid off, as that was the problem for sure. The car drives straight now, and that's without even having it aligned yet. I could see the bushing completely worn out on the left side, and could move the mount easily with my fingers. It's like the rubber just tore in several pieces. I'll try to take a picture of it so you can see.

Should have saved the cash...we offer rebuilt a arms with new bushes & balljoint !

Holy freeholies! What a project. Better make sure I get up early on a Saturday to get started, so I have all day and Sunday if need be to do this, once I get me a set of HMS A Arms.

If I buy myself a spring compressor, will I avoid all the disassembly and reassembly you needed to do?

Terry,

How much are your Control Arms ??

Do you install Grease Fittings on the Bushings ???

The bushes are bonded rubber for the 'stoc' replacement arms.The horiz type will have the option of poly bushes.Neither need grease.The balljoint is the 'genuine' OEM replacement part per 'TUV' in Germany,its a pre packed unit BUT the boot is retained by clips that can be removed to repack the balljoint at various intervals...

Reminded me of an article I saw in Popular Science (or some similar not-quite-auto magazine) many, many years ago, a how-to on compressing struts. It had you compress the strut with some sort of clamp, then put the assembly in a waterproof wooden box, fill with water, and put in a chest freezer (I swear I am not making this up). You removed the clamp, the ice (theoretically) holding the strut compressed, installed the strut and waited for the ice to melt, releasing the spring. Even at my then tender age (12 or 13 or something) it looked so terrifyingly dangerous that I couldn't believe that anyone would try it, much less write it up in a magazine. Anyone else ever heard of this one?

Yeh...we all have 6 hrs to compress and 'freeze' each spring....

Damn - I didn't know you offered that service. Is that new? I don't think it was available in October was it? I never heard about it before.

Oh well, they weren't too terribly expensive. About $280 for both of them. And I saved a ton of $$$ by replacing them myself. But I could see why mechanics charge a lot for that job. It's a major PITA. Although now that I know the tricks, I could do it much easier the next time.